LAUNCH ANALYSIS-ES

Ok it's hard (pun intended) not to think of something else when looking at some of these new F1 noses. So the cars have been launched and shaken down at a cold Jerez. But how will they really work in the heat? bahrain will tell us more of they will work in the dry heat and long runs. There have been many launch stories and since I don't want to rehash any of the stories, here I present available launch analysis of the current crop of F1 cars as done by Matt Sommerfield of Pitpass, who is excellent at making the technical not so technical for the rest of us. Although technical is as technical as it gets.

Sauber C33

The Swiss team, based in Hinwil, are one of the teams earmarked to be struggling financially. Although they have some fantastic infrastructure in place most of this came from their time under BMW ownership. That's not to say they haven't been investing but without major investment like BMW offered everything suffers.

Ferrari F14T

Ferrari is to Formula One is like what Ant is to Dec or fish is to chips, you can't have one without the other. Being the only team to have competed in every World Championship since the Formula's inception the team remain the most recognisable brand on the grid, therefore the Ferrari car launch is always a defining moment for the season ahead.

Lotus E22

A singular render doesn't give up too much information of course but what it does create is a furore about the 'Sabretooth' or 'Pitchfork' style nose that the team have illustrated.

The concept shown is a mild iteration of something I floated several weeks back (below) allowing the teams to run to the maximal height of 550mm much further forward and reducing nearly all of the losses involved with the 185mm tip height. The premise of the design centres around creating a centralised void rather then recovering space either side of the 'Finger' noses. In terms of the Lotus image perspective is not playing tricks on you and the right hand tooth is longer than the left.

McLaren MP4-29

I think it's fair to say that 2013 was rather a lacklustre year for the Woking based team who's 2012 campaign was bookended by great results. A slump in the middle of 2012 just when the team were focusing their attention on the MP4-28 led the team to think aggressively in order to chase performance. This was compounded by the team's mistakes around Pirelli's 2013 offerings thought to emanate from the scale model tyres given to the teams to work with. 2014 will be seen as an interim year for McLaren with it being the last year in a 19 year partnership with Mercedes as engine suppliers, as Honda becomes the power unit of choice once more in 2015.

Williams FW36

Another day another pre-launch, again courtesy of a team via twitter, Williams furnishing us with 3D renders of the FW36. Just like the ones presented yesterday by Force India the real car will likely have several key differences but it does afford us the opportunity to look at some of the features of the FW36 in advance. I will of course provide more analysis as the actual car rolls out in Jerez.

Force India VJM07

Force India find themselves with an all new driver lineup for 2014 with Nico Hulkenberg making his return to the fold, joined by Sergio Perez following his departure from McLaren. Having abandoned development fairly early on into 2013 to concentrate their efforts on the VJM07 the latter part of last season was perhaps unrepresentative of the teams performance. They also found themselves on the back foot when Pirelli were forced to return to the 2012 construction with the team having extracted performance early on that saw them ahead of McLaren.

Other cars technical analysis are not done yet so we'll have to wait for that. Hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed sharing. If you enjoyed this posting, please do share it with your network so more people can enjoy it as well. Also, check out my t-shirt design for Alonso fans below (designs for other teams and drivers also available), click on image.